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Water Fountain Fool

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It waits. In January, my sixth-grader missed his first middle school dance. He had really wanted to attend this masquerade-themed party for three local parish schools. I confirmed with his friends' moms that they would be there. He designed a mask made to look like a monster character he has written about for a Young Authors book. I helped him bring it to life.  The plan (top) and the execution (bottom) He was all set to have a great time. And then: the flu. On the Wednesday before the Friday dance, he came home early from school feeling queasy. By dinner time he was dealing with nausea, a stuffy head, runny nose, a slight cough, and a 102-degree fever. He hardly moved off the couch for the next two days. When he asked through a fatigued haze if he could still go to the dance, I had to break the bad news that he could not. Tears dripped down his flushed cheeks. My heart ached for him, because I had wallowed through that kind of disappointment. But mine has an embarrassing story att...
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Here Lies

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There is no headstone. No rectangular concrete marker with a rounded edge across the top to blunt the grief. No carved heart of incongruously shiny granite, no lichen-embossed urn to hold flowers and remind me of my emptiness. There are no words carved indelibly to remind anyone that she was. My mother wanted to be cremated, and have her ashes scattered in the mountains. She thought funerals were barbaric, all those people hovering over an expensive coffin holding a person who's gone, all that wailing and swaying, all that sadness.  She hated the idea of people coming to sit at a marker to mourn her. Celebrate, she said, because I've gone somewhere better. No use being sad. Perhaps she didn't understand that funerals and graves and headstones aren't for the dead. They're for the living. For the ones left behind who have nothing to hold but air and memories. For the ones who are left with no way to prove their loved one existed except this box she rested in for a whi...
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Lessons from Unplanting

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The Little Limes were beautiful. In early summer, the so-called-petite hydrangeas sprouted thick green leaves and a profusion of pale green blossoms that faded to white then pink. Their light scent drifted around the patio attracting winged things.  After winter set in for good, the leaves broke off but the blooms dried into shades of caramel, sand, and chestnut that lingered on the stalks. Then the brittle blossoms swayed against the white snow. Yes, they were beautiful. For another time, another garden, a life where no one perpetually needed to pass through. Here, now, they were flower-heavy and weight-bent and wild-grown. I tried to tame them, really I did. Every spring I trimmed the shrubs down to a diameter of less than two feet. I wound a circular tomato plant trellis around each bush to coax it to carry its own weight. And I spoke sweetly to them, asking them to please bloom upright like their rosebush neighbors and not crowd the patio stepping stones. Please - be polite, be...
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Confessions of Inertia

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Sit down, we need to talk.  I've got something to tell you that I've been keeping to myself like a shameful secret for a while now. It's grown so heavy and thick, I need to get it off my conscience so I can sleep better.  Deep breaths. It's not about the children; they're fine. This is about me.  Over the last year or so, I've developed an addiction.  Every single day I crave this thing so deep within my bones that I have to have it, or I can't function. Without it, my body starts to break down and my brain begins to melt to uselessness. I can survive from dawn until lunchtime, but then I start plotting and planning and counting the hours. What errand can I skip, what chore can I put off so I can get my fix? What is drop-dead necessary, and what can wait until I fulfill that indecent need burrowing inside my head?  My friend, I'm profoundly addicted. To naps.  It started innocently enough, just a recreational resting-my-eyes. I could get up anytime I wan...
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It's My Thanksgiving, You're Just Invited

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At the first Thanksgiving I celebrated with my future husband-to-be, my future in-laws whom I love dearly served turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn. And maybe rolls. That's it. And I said, "That's not Thanksgiving. That's just Thursday." Where were the exotic, calorie-laden dishes that only appear once a year? The puzzling mincemeat pie, the savory dressing, the sweets like cookies and chocolates and pastries? That's more like it. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Perhaps it's an unconventional choice, but one that makes sense given that I grew up playing jump-rope with the poverty line . My family didn't host or attend cook-outs on Labor Day or Memorial Day, and never bought fireworks on Fourth of July. Christmastime was often excitement tinged with disappointment and forced merriment I didn't enjoy. But Thanksgiving Days were full of delicious once-a-year foods, thanks to community pantry donations that made our food stamps go farther .  Leadi...
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How to Take Your Children to a Corn Farm Fall Festival in Ohio

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  Don't. I really mean it. You think it will be fun, but it won't. You think it will be all family bonding, laughing while inexplicably wading through a vat of uncooked corn kernels, sipping cider on an outlandishly oversized, rough-hewn wooden swing while gazing at one another lovingly. It will not be like that. It will be hell on a farm, which is already a kind of hell, with goats scream-bleating at you and children getting rub-burns on snot-slick plastic slides after losing their squares of scratchy carpet and expensive small-batch caramel corn flying everywhere and $50 for a lumpy pumpkin you have to hack off the prickly vine yourself and someone will cry. Someone is always crying. Sometimes that someone is you. And there is no alcohol for purchase at this farm. Stay home and stream a movie instead. Microwave popcorn is fine.
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More Things I Never Thought I'd Have to Say

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Almost five years ago, I gifted the world a list of Things I Never Thought I'd Have to Say , an ongoing collection of utterances that made me pause and think, "WTF did I just say to my child?"  Gems included please don't lick the dog , we don't cook our friends , and  don't high-five him in the face. Since 2020, I have said dozens more of these bizarre sentences to the two small humans who live in my house and follow me around, asking for snacks and screen time.  Because parenting is weird. Any time you try to teach another person what shouldn't be eaten, how to be kind to others, and also how to act in public, things are bound to get muddled. It's time for an update of what I've said.  Strange sentences about food Please don't put Goldfish in your ears Don't hit yourself in the face with carrots. You have cranberry sauce on your glasses. Please don't put hot dogs inside your pockets. There's no reason to ever take syrup into the ba...
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